The blessings of a window in the Wall

How can a window in a wall be a blessing but opening a door could mean so much more? Tracey McClure goes to Jerusalem to hear the story of the Catholic Comboni sisters' peaceful struggle to keep their convent's nursery school open.

TM:I’d like you to come with me to Jerusalem – the site of our Lord’s Last Supper, his agony in the Garden of Gethsemene, his crucifixion on Mt. Calvary and his Resurrection. I was there again in October 2010 and want to give you an update on a story I covered earlier in the year.

I call it the story of the “window in the wall”… but what was once a mixed blessing, is now a fond memory. My journey to first see the window in the wall began with this extraordinary nun.

AV: “One day the sisters woke up in the morning to find the trees in the garden were all cut down because they had decided the wall would (follow) such a line... the wall has really changed our lives there .”

Spanish born Comboni Sr. Alicia Vacas recalls the grim day in 2004 that the Catholic convent she shares with 11 other Comboni sisters on the southern slope of the Mount of Olives became yet another casualty of the ongoing tensions between Israelis and Palestinians.

Israeli soldiers and builders appropriated convent property and began constructing what is today a section of Israel’s towering 26ft “security” wall, cutting off this part of Bethany overlooking Jerusalem from the West Bank. It was here, the place of Lazarus as “Al Aizarieh” is known in Arabic, that the Gospel of John tells us Jesus rose Lazarus from the dead. The Comboni sisters have lived there since before Israel became a state.

I first visited the sisters’ convent in January 2010. The wall cuts right through the convent property and takes up two sides of a tiny playground for the kindergarten that the nuns run for some 50 Palestinian children.

AV: “It means the families of the kids of the kindergarten, they all remain on the other side. And the village of Al Aizarieh, Bethany, is on the other side… (Our) church is on the other side. This is the church we go to every week and this is the Christian community we follow and the families we know, (whom) we visit. Everything now is on the other side of the wall. The only way of reaching out is going to the checkpoint which is 15 kilometers from home.” (ndr. est. a half hour drive or more via public transport)

“(Our) church is not more than 50 meters far from home but (now) you have to go through Jerusalem, then through the checkpoint and it takes more than one hour if there are no problems at the checkpoint…… so there are many limitations”

Sr. Alicia and the other sisters are cut off from their church and once familiar Christian processions on feasts like Palm Sunday can no longer take place. Those on the “wrong” side of the wall no longer have access to hospitals, schools, shops and businesses.

AV: “It is a fact that occupation prevents religious people to reach THE places of prayer…for both Muslims and Christians. Palestinians from the West Bank, they cannot reach the temples, the places for prayer. Christians cannot go to the Holy Sepulchre to pray, even on feast days… Muslims cannot go to Al Aqsa on their feast days….more than 60% of the families in Al Aizerieh have lost their jobs…(people began trying to climb over the wall)…but when the wall became 8 meters, it was impossible”

The sisters have painted brightly colored giraffes, lions and tigers to “soften” the impact of the wall on the 3 to 4 year old toddlers in their care but I wonder how successful the effort is. The solid cement structure casts a deep shadow over the little playhouse, slide and games.
Thanks to Vatican intervention, Israeli authorities opened a small window in the wall, allowing the children to return to school in 2009.

AV: “We have to say most of the families are very poor and they are already supported for the school fees so they don’t have the chance (to pay for alternative transportation)…so the situation became very complicated and the intervention by the Vatican ambassador was a blessing to us … he managed to convince the military to open a space for the kids. They promised a gate and the gate became a sort of window…but it’s so high.. it starts at 1.60 meters high”

1.60 meters is 5 and a quarter feet off the ground. When I visited, it was in time to see the nuns in their white habits take the tiny hands of these toddlers and lead them two at a time up a steep flight of metal steps to reach the open “window.” They’re so careful with their tiny charges. Not one must trip or fall – too far to drop.

The scene before me was surreal to say the least, and I was suddenly overwhelmed by an immense and inexplicable sense of grief, the kind you feel when someone very dear to you dies.
But for Sr. Alicia, that staircase was a blessing.

AV: “it took a long time to put it .. so the first days we were literally lifting up the kids and passing them through the window … we were using bricks, anything to make it higher to lift the kids through … at the beginning it was traumatic (for the kids).”

“(it is not possible for the families to pass through the wall) so if a child is sick they cannot come (also) on feasts like mother’s day…”
It is a ridiculous situation if you see the kids jumping through the window and sometimes waiting for hours…Sometimes the soldiers forget to come and open (the window. They are supposed to open it) for 15 minutes at 8 o’clock in the morning, and then for fifteen minutes at midday but quite often they forget or have other business and come one hour later so having the kids there waiting under the window for them…it is so ridiculous, it doesn’t make any sense.”

Well, what happened next in this on-going story really doesn’t make any sense – to me. The window in the wall disappeared over the summer making it next to impossible for the sisters to reopen their nursery.

The immense irony is that where that little window once hung, now stands a towering sliding gate for the passage of vehicles, a man-sized door for pedestrians, a new guard tower, and what looks like a document processing center for walk-throughs, complete with in-and-out turnstiles.

In sum, it is easy to understand why the sisters were relieved they would no longer have to subject the toddlers to the steep climb up to the window and down the other side.

FG: “When they put this big gate and we saw that everything was put in order in such a way (we were convinced) that this big gate in one way or the other has to be opened. It’s functioning actually. We saw it opening. We saw also this small door… so we say, o.k., that is the door of the children. And also the parents on the other side thought so.”

Italian sr. Fulgida Gasparrini breathes a sigh of frustration. The new gate remains closed and the mixed blessing of the window in the wall for her is now a fond memory.

According to the Apostolic Nuncio Archbishop Antonio Franco who has been negotiating the opening of the gate with Israeli authorities, it won’t be opening anytime soon. Some have told the sisters the gate will never open.

Franco: “We had a meeting with the military authorities in early September and we were announced that this year the door would not open.”

The Vatican’s ambassador notes the Comboni sisters had received assurances from Israeli authorities when the wall was being constructed that they would be given access for the children.

Franco: “But this year, the military was saying there’s a danger of security and I was arguing that there’s no danger. We can also get help, the collaboration on the other side to have the movement of children without any problem. But… they offered to facilitate the transit of the bus. But the parents did not want the little children to be transported by bus.”

FG: “(The) parents, they say kids so young, every day on the checkpoint they see things that really at times are also nasty.”

Most of the parents from the “wrong” side of the wall were unwilling or simply couldn’t afford to send their toddlers by bus – an hour long journey each way through an armed military checkpoint.
I don’t think I’d have the courage to put my 3 or 4 year old through such an ordeal.

The ten children whose parents did accept the option are accompanied by two teachers.
They drive up to the checkpoint in their Palestinian van, get out and pass the soldiers armed with automatic weapons – often, but not always, given priority over others waiting in line. Once on the other side, they have to walk to another, Israeli licensed minibus which will finally bring them to the convent nursery.

FG “So for the parents to take a Palestinian minibus to reach a certain point to get the Israeli minibus to come in, … for them it’s an expense they cannot afford. To come to the nursery school is impossible for parents who cannot afford to even pay the school fees of the children… and then you know, you have to see the type of ‘facilitation’ (offered by the army at the checkpoints). .. Every day (the guards change) so one day you meet the one who says, ‘oh yes I know, these are the children (so you can) go’. Another day, you have somebody who (stops the children, makes them get off and wants to investigate further)… ”

Sister Fulgida explains that if a pregnant Palestinian woman on the ‘wrong’ side of the wall needs to get to hospital for a complicated delivery, she can wait sometimes up to eight hours or more at the checkpoint.

“We had a sister who became sick when we had the (first) checkpoint here (close to the convent). She could not (get) to hospital. We asked them to just remove a barrier to get the car in. They refused, they said ‘no’. And she had to go around (through the next checkpoint). By the time she got to hospital she was in coma. Surely they don’t help, when you have these experiences no?”

Of the 55 children enrolled for the scholastic year 2010-2011, only half can now attend. Just a fifth of them are able to make what was once the five minute journey through the wall from the “wrong” side.

The Comboni sisters’ kindergarten and home for spiritual retreats is an oasis of peace in an angry land. A caring place full of love, reconciliation and just plain goodness.

FG: “You cannot generalize – you cannot say everybody is bad. You cannot say Israelis (are) bad and Palestinians are good and so on… if you speak with the people, I’m sure the majority of the Israeli people are not in agreement with this wall. And there are so many journalists, also women, who come here to see what is happening. So, it means not everybody accepts that this wall is there as a protective wall.”

Am I crazy to believe that if a window in a wall can be a blessing in disguise, the opening of a door can open hearts and minds in a never ending conflict that has bred hatred and wounded so many souls? Only time will tell.
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